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奈米科技 FAQ
1. 何謂分子奈米科技 (molecular nanotechnology)?
分子奈米科技乃是一種特殊製造科技的名稱. 顧名思義地, 當我們能夠從原子的層次開始往上築構東西時, 我們的分子奈米科技技術就算成熟了, 屆時我們將能以原子的精準度來掌玩各種物質. 雖此科技目前尚未完全成熟; 但當萬事具備時, 我們就會有一套既完備且便宜的系統工具來控制物質的結構. 其他名稱, 如分子工程 (molecular engineering) 或分子製造 (molecular manufacturing) 也常被用來稱呼此一高新科技.
奈米科技的中心主軸乃是：大部分任一化學穩定的結構物, 除非依據物理定律特別不許可, 均可被真實製造出來. 諾貝爾物理獎得主 Richard Feynman 於1959年首先引進了這種一個原子一個原子地來製造東西的可能性. 當時他說 "據我所見所知, 物理學定律並未反對一個原子一個原子地來操控物質的可能性" .
近來科學家已經有能力來直接觀察及把玩原子了, 但這於快速成長中的奈米尺度科學及科技範疇內, 僅是全豹的一斑. 如要有能力來製造出商品可能還要一段時間, 但理論上及電腦演算上均顯示分子奈米製造是可行的, 並沒有違反現存的任何物理定律. 這些理論模型同時也讓我們預觀到分子奈米製造下的世界. 現在科學家正積極於發明製造許多新的技術及工具, 用來將目前僅存在於電腦模型中的奈米科技轉變成實體. 雖然大部分的奈米科技目前仍僅存於理論的階段, 但看起來似乎沒有任何基本理論上的障礙, 來阻礙他們的美夢成真.
2. 如何達到精準控制的境界?
如以目前的大尺度的製造技術 (macro-manufacturing techniques) 為圭臬, 我們必然心裡有數, 要掌控管理一整隊的奈米機器 (nano machines) 絕非兒科易事. 茲僅舉一些主要的需求條件：我們必須有一地方可以儲存我們的庫存原子; 也必須有一種方法可以將庫存的原子或分子送至我們的製造樓層; 要有組裝各零組件的機器; 及須有一製程控制方法, 能確保正確的零件數量, 在正確的時間中, 被至於正確的地方. 如能創造出此一配合無間的系統, 來確保每一原子精確的置放點, 我們就能製造出高品質及高可靠度的產品.
K. Eric Drexler 在思考這些問題時, 想出了一個叫組裝者 (assembler) 的東西. 這東西初步可能僅是一種次顯微的 (submicroscopic) 機械手臂. 假設我們如果能將這種機械手臂製造出來, 且其是可一隨意操控的, 那麼我們就能用它來取得化合物, 且將之精確地按化學反應的秩序排列置放. 大致上, 依此方法來啟動一連串精確控制的化學反應, 我們就能製造出具精確原子排列的大型物體.
為要讓一切依我們的指令作用, 每一個組裝者就必須具有一組能夠接收及執行命令的程序, 來指定他的動作. 我們早已經創造出恰恰能做此事的系統工具, 那就是電腦. 如將電腦科技和奈米科技整合, 我們就能進行我們想從事的那種製造了. 屆時分子奈米機器甚至可能會有內建快速的動態記憶體 (RAM), 和雖較慢但較永久的記憶儲存體. 它們當然也會具有通訊的能力和本身的動力. 針對奈米組裝者, 我們也可能將其手臂的尖端設計成可以更換的頭, 使其於功能面上能夠多才多藝.
因原子是如此的細小, 如僅單靠一個奈米組裝者, 要來製造出任何一樣我們手邊現有的東西那是不可能的. 我們一定要使用一大群有組織的組裝者來一起工作, 以便製造我們要的產品. 人類已經學會了如何製造網絡化的機器, 且對其間相關問題的瞭解也是越來越進步. 如果以電腦網路已能發揮的功能當一有效合理的指標, 那麼我們就可想像一大群互相連結的奈米科技機器, 其所能發揮的潛力將是何其的龐大.
3. 為何要發展奈米科技？
先不管科學家們先天上就是不可救藥的好奇, 永遠試著要向外推開存在於可能與不可能間的界線. 光是分子奈米科技機器所達到的精準度所能產生的效益, 就足夠讓我們瞭解為什麼我們要發展奈米科技的原因. 應用奈米科技, 我們就可以精準到讓每一原子各得其所且各歸其所. 使用奈米科技的技術, 在我們的設計的任何角落就沒有任何累贅多餘的零件. 於是, 我們就可使用此一精準的機器, 來製造同樣精準的產品. 因有此精準度, 我們就可以回收於製程中所產生的廢料, 並將之用於其他地方, 製造成本也因而較便宜.
人類的科技從未曾有如奈米科技般精準地控制過, 我們當今所使用的科技是屬粗糙的技術. 我們總是拿一大塊東西, 加一塊或減一塊什麼, 直到得到我們企圖要製造的東西. 我們總是從零件來組裝我們要的物件, 從來不管它於分子層次的結構. 能精準到原子層次的製造, 過去僅見於人工養育的晶體中, 或於活的生物體中, 如生物體中的核醣體 (Ribosome), 能於組合所有的蛋白質, 或如去氧核醣核酸 (DNA), 能攜載複製另一生命個體的指令. 假如於研發奈米科技的過程中, 能納入類似上述的製程, 我們方能登入某種程度的複雜性,並開始能掌控過去僅存在於大自然及其進化中的各系統.
當我們想到未來我們能製造的器具的大小, 就可看到發展奈米科技的一些額外的效益. 一旦我們能夠在原子的尺度面工作時, 我們就可製造出能夠到處遊串的機器, 此機器將可遊串至過去我們僅可夢想的地方. 越來越多的資訊將被壓縮置入越來越小的空間, 於是我們就可耗越來越少的資源作越來越多的事情. 奈米科技的發展, 雖讓我們能有前所未見且極高效率的科技來控制我們的生活環境, 但要好好利用此預期中的研發效益, 我們須有遠見及規劃.
4. 奈米科技如何改善我們的生活?
奈米科技第一個明顯的效益就在於改進現在的生產製造技術. 我們將有能力把目前成熟的生產製造方法, 延伸擴展到原子尺度的精準度. 這會使我們更加瞭解許多東西生成的因由, 也因而使我們能夠製造生產東西的種類及數量的寬廣度大幅擴充. 我們能夠控制的系統將由巨大到微小,甚或至超微小, 同時也能將生產製造東西的成本降低.
奈米科技也會使醫學的領域產生巨大的變化. 科學家已想到如何製造一種微小的機器, 能夠在血液循環系統內, 一邊巡邏一邊清理血管; 或是派出此微小機械戰警追蹤並殲滅癌細胞及腫瘤; 或是派它們去傷口處直接修護受傷的組織; 甚或用它們去更換失落的肢體或是損壞的器官. 這類醫學上修護系統的應用將會是非常的廣泛, 因而其整體對醫學上的衝擊也將會非常的巨大.
奈米科技將會碰觸到我們生活的每一個層面, 從我們喝的水到我們呼吸的空氣. 當我們有能力來補捉、定位、改變分子的組態, 我們就可以製造出一種過濾系統, 來將空氣中的毒物篩除, 或從我們的飲水中將有危險性的微生物去除. 同時我們也可開啟一段將過去污染的環境, 逐漸清理乾淨的長途旅程.
奈米科技也會為太空科技打開一扇嶄新的門戶. 由於當今送入太空的運送酬載 (payload) 成本是相當的昂貴, 大約每公斤20,000美金, 故無法好好地利用太空. 奈米科技將有助於我們把更多具有更多功能且體積更小的機器送入太空, 為人類文明朝整個太陽系的拓展鋪路. 有人甚至認為更進一步地應用奈米科技於醫學上, 將可使我們的身體適應太空或其他星球世界的生存. 這當然還有好一段路要走, 但至少讓我們瞥見了奈米科技可能做到的完全掌控的願景.
總而言之, 經奈米科技所研發出來的各樣更好更快更堅固更細小且更便宜的系統, 很清楚地會改善我們生活的各個領域, 讓我們從中受益匪淺.
Medicine
· Chapter 7 of Engines of Creation: "Engines of Healing"
· Chapter 8 of Engines of Creation: "Long Life in an Open World"
· Chapter 9 of Engines of Creation: "A Door to the Future"
· "Medicine that Cures" in Chapter 1 of Unbounding the Future
· Chapter 10 of Unbounding the Future: "Nanomedicine"
· "Nanotechnology in Medicine", an article by Gregory Fahy in Update 16
· "Nanotechnology and Medicine", an article by Ralph Merkle
· Visit the Nanomedicine Page, which features information on the technical issues involved in the medical applications of molecular nanotechnology and medical nanodevice design, plus a FAQ and a growing collection of nanomedicine-related information, links, and technical papers.
Space Development
· Chapter 6 of Engines of Creation: "The World Beyond Earth"
· Molecular Manufacturing Shortcut Group: A Chapter of the National Space Society
· "Some Novel Space Propulsion Systems", by Forrest Bishop, presented at the Fifth Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology.
· "The Logical Core Architecture", by Tom McKendree, presented at the Fifth Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology.
· "Diamond in the Sky" by J. Storrs Hall in Update 16
The Environment
· "Healing And Protecting The Earth" in Chapter 8 of Engines of Creation
· Chapter 9 of Unbounding the Future "Restoring the Environment".
· "Will the BioArchive Project Work?" by David Brin
· NanoEcology (http://www.foresight.org/nanoecology/index.html)
5. 開發奈米科技有何風險?
幾乎任何的科技均可能被濫用, 奈米科技也不可能例外. 雖然奈米科技仍在其
Almost any technology can be abused, and nanotechnology will be no exception. Although nanotechnology is still in the early stages of development, Foresight has encouraged exploration of what dangers might arise if the resulting research were applied to destructive goals. We have developed several papers that explore the threats more concretely, including specific scenarios on the development of biological and chemical warfare and more:
· "A Dialog on Dangers" by K. Eric Drexler
· "Engines of Destruction", Chapter 11 of Engines of Creation
· "Self-replication and Nanotechnology" by Ralph C. Merkle
· The impact of self-replication errors (including deliberate) and the potential for preventing their propagation is considered in the more technical paper prepared by Robert A. Freitas, Jr.: "Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators, with Public Policy Recommendations".
· "Nanotechnology and International Security" by Mark A. Gubrud considers how the nature of war changes with the application of nanotechnology.
Discussions on how to avoid the dangers of poor implementations of nanotechnology are often carried out on Foresight's discussion website Nanodot. Join us online to find out more from people actively working to develop nanotechnology.
6. What precautions can we take to ensure safe development?
雖然奈米科技能有助我們對物質結構的控制, 我們必須自問誰將來控制奈米科技? 主要的危險可能不在於一個災難性的意外, 而在於權力的濫用. 畢竟我們是活在一個高度競爭的世界, 且此世界正朝分子奈米科技的發展加速前進. 此對奈米科技主控權的擔心, 激發我們對技術機密的辯論. 假如每一人均能有機會介入實驗室內進展的資訊, 對克服此危險將有極大的助益. 如果能夠減少在軍方黑盒子中研發的專案計劃數量, 我們就可能增加一般人參與奈米科技工作的人數. 能有更多人參與奈米科技工作的領域, 就等於我們於緊急狀況中能更好地保護我們自己. 我們也因而可能看到於醫學, 製造, 及環境等領域上專案研發計劃數量的增加. 能公開地聚焦於能正面幫助人民的專案計劃, 就能長久地保障此資訊能夠被大眾所獲得.
我們必須切記科技意外及蓄意濫用的危險性. 針對意外防範方面, 我們可積極推動一套完整的科技倫理系統及一套對新科技開發者和應用者的責任制度. 當奈米科技的研發接近商業應用的佈局時, 信用將是我們必需繼續關心的主題. 有人認為單靠誠信是不夠的, 故科技研發的規範必須考慮到顛覆成分 (subversive elements) 永遠存在的事實. 於此狀況下, 我們可採取一些方法來避免奈米科技的濫用, 如採用特殊環境 (exotic environment) 措施, 藉此一種奈米機器僅能在特殊的實驗室條件下作用. 採此措施, 如一奈米機器遭外釋, 將立即停止作用. 除誠信問題之外, 也有人擔心複製錯誤可能發生的問題. 當然我們一定要朝創造複製資訊越少錯誤越好的系統方面努力, 理想上最好能無錯誤. 也有人建議最好能設計出能限制內部演化 (internal evolution) 的系統.
These elements and more are discussed in the Foresight Guidelines on Molecular Nanotechnology, which were created to begin addressing the need for a coherent plan for developing nanotechnology in a safe way.
Further reading is available on the safe development of molecular nanotechnology as solutions are considered in following documents:
· "The Weapon of Openness" by Arthur Kantrowitz
· "Strategies and Survival", Chapter 12 of Engines of Creation
· "Regulating Nanotechnology Development" by David Forrest
· Foresight Guidelines on Molecular Nanotechnology
Most nanotechnological systems will have elements of computer technology. It would be a reasonable precaution to develop those systems so that they are internally secure. Two approaches have been suggested: the use of encryption techniques or other security measures. Information specific to security issues is available in these pages:
· "Nanotechnology and Global Security", a talk presented at the Fourth Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology by Admiral David E. Jeremiah, United States Navy (Retired), former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
· "Nanotechnology and International Security" was presented at the Fifth Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology by Mark A. Gubrud
· "Molecular Nanotechnology and the World System", by Thomas McCarthy
Given that the dangers of nanotechnology may be almost as broad as the benefits, it is Foresight's primary goal to ensure that these issues are discussed openly, so that we may develop deterrents or solutions before problems arise.
7. What progress is being made today in nanotechnology?
Scientists are working not just on the materials of the future, but also the tools that will allow us to use these ingredients to create products. Experimental work has already resulted in the production of molecular tweezers, a carbon nanotube transistor, and logic gates.
Theoretical work is progressing as well. James M. Tour of Rice University is working on the construction of a molecular computer. Researchers at Zyvex have proposed an Exponential Assembly Process that might improve the creation of assemblers and products, before they are even simulated in the lab. We have even seen researchers create an artificial muscle using nanotubes, which may have medical applications in the nearer term.
Follow progress on Nanodot or become a supporting member of the Foresight Institute and receive the quarterly Foresight Update, which always contains information on the latest developments.
8. How long will it take to develop molecular nanotechnology?
We began our discussion with physics and chemistry and continued with the capture and placement of single atoms using new devices like the scanning tunneling microscope. Shortly thereafter, researchers were able to create carbon nanotubes, which is likely to become our primary structural element in the future. Nobel Laureate Dr. Richard Smalley (Rice University) discussed the advances in carbon nanotube manipulation in his 1996 address: From Balls to Tubes to Ropes: New Materials from Carbon. Recent presentations at the Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology highlight that this development continues as we gain the ability to assemble the fibers into sheets and three-dimensional lattices. Dr. Carlo Montemagno of Cornell and his team of scientists have created the first molecular motor, and this gives us an inkling of some of the atom transport systems that may arise.
Computer systems continue to advance as well, with the development of faster, smaller, and cheaper systems that have greater capacity. Assuming that security systems also see improvement, then these should be applicable to molecular machines, once they are developed. These improvements will also impact our ability to model new molecular devices, and help stabilize design parameters before the machines are actually built.
Development in nanotechnology is expected to continue at an accelerating pace, given that funding for these types of research is increasingly available. While estimates range from 15 to 50 years, there is no question that nanotechnology will arrive in the not-too-distant future. We recommend that you read Nanodot or become a supporting member of the Foresight Institute, entitling you to receive the quarterly Foresight Update, which always contains information on the latest developments.
11. Where is commercial development being done?
Much of the work being done in nanotechnology is taking place in universities across the globe; however, commercial companies are beginning to emerge as the time horizon for nanotechnology narrows. One of the early entries into the race to build a molecular assembler and product assembly process was the Texas-based corporation, Zyvex Corp..
The U.S. Government has also recently become interested in promoting the development of nanotechnology, and has created the half-billion dollar National Nanotechnology Initiative to meet some of the challenges. Their website includes a list of industry participants.
1. What chemical elements would medical nanorobots be made of?
The typical medical nanodevice will probably be a micron-scale robot assembled from nanoscale parts. These parts could range in size from 1-100 nm (1 nm = 10-9 meter), and might be fitted together to make a working machine measuring perhaps 0.5-3 microns (1 micron = 10-6 meter) in diameter. Three microns is about the maximum size for bloodborne medical nanorobots, due to the capillary passage requirement.
Carbon will likely be the principal element comprising the
bulk of a medical nanorobot, probably in the form of diamond or diamondoid/fullerene
nanocomposites 
largely
because of the tremendous strength and chemical inertness of diamond. Many
other light elements such as hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, nitrogen, fluorine,
silicon, etc. will be used for special purposes in nanoscale gears and other
components.
2. Could human body fluids get inside the nanorobot?
From a medical standpoint, it makes sense to regard the nanorobot
as having two spaces which should be considered separately its interior
and its exterior. It is true that the nanorobot exterior will be exposed to
the diverse chemical brew that makes up our human biochemistry. But the interior
of the nanorobot may be a highly controlled environment, possibly a vacuum,
into which external liquids cannot normally intrude.
Of course it may often be necessary for a nanorobot to import external fluids in a controlled manner for chemical analysis or other purposes. But the important thing is that the device will be watertight and airtight. Body fluids cannot get into the interior of the device, unless these fluids are purposely pumped in for some specific reason.
3. What would be the physical appearance of a human who has been injected with medical nanorobots?
In most cases a human patient who is is undergoing a nanomedical treatment is going to look just like anyone else who is sick. The typical nanomedical treatment (e.g. to combat a bacterial or viral infection) will consist of an injection of perhaps a few cubic centimeters of micron-sized nanorobots suspended in fluid (probably a water/saline suspension). The typical therapeutic dose may include up to 1-10 trillion (1 trillion = 1012) individual nanorobots, although in some cases treatment may only require a few million or a few billion individual devices to be injected. Each nanorobot will be on the order of perhaps 0.5 micron up to perhaps 3 microns in diameter. (The exact size depends on the design, and on exactly what the nanorobots are intended to do.)
The adult human body has a volume of perhaps 100,000 cm3 and a blood volume of ~5400 cm3, so adding a mere ~3 cm3 dose of nanorobots is not particularly invasive. The nanorobots are going to be doing exactly what the doctor tells them to do, and nothing more (barring malfunctions). So the only physical change you will see in the patient is that he or she will very rapidly become well again. Most symptoms such as fever and itching have specific biochemical causes which can also be managed, reduced, and eliminated using the appropriate injected nanorobots. Major rashes or lesions such as those that occur when you have the measles will take a bit longer to reverse, because in this case the broken skin must also be repaired.
4. What would a typical nanorobot look like?
It is impossible to say exactly what a generic nanorobot would look like. Nanorobots intended to travel through the bloodstream to their target will probably be 500-3000 nanometers (1 nanometer = 10-9 meter) in characteristic dimension. Nonbloodborne tissue-traversing nanorobots might be as large as 50-100 microns, and alimentary or bronchial-traveling nanorobots may be even larger still. Each species of medical nanorobot will be designed to accomplish a specific task, and many shapes and sizes are possible.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, no actual working nanorobot has yet been built. Many theoretical designs have been proposed that look good on paper, but these preliminary designs could change significantly after the necessary research, development and testing has been completed.
5. Can you give a concrete example of a simple medical nanorobot?
One very simple nanorobot that I designed a few years ago is the artificial mechanical red cell, which I call a "respirocyte." The respirocyte measures about 1 micron in diameter and just floats along in the bloodstream. It is a spherical nanorobot made of 18 billion atoms. These atoms are mostly carbon atoms arranged as diamond in a porous lattice structure inside the spherical shell. The respirocyte is essentially a tiny pressure tank that can be pumped full of up to 9 billion oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules. Later on, these gases can be released from the tiny tank in a controlled manner. The gases are stored onboard at pressures up to about 1000 atmospheres. (Respirocytes can be rendered completely nonflammable by constructing the device internally of sapphire, a flameproof material with chemical and mechanical properties otherwise similar to diamond.)
The surface of each respirocyte is 37% covered with 29,160 molecular sorting rotors (Nanosystems, page 374) that can load and unload gases into the tanks. There are also gas concentration sensors on the outside of each device. When the nanorobot passes through the lung capillaries, O2 partial pressure is high and CO2 partial pressure is low, so the onboard computer tells the sorting rotors to load the tanks with oxygen and to dump the CO2. When the device later finds itself in the oxygen-starved peripheral tissues, the sensor readings are reversed. That is, CO2 partial pressure is relatively high and O2 partial pressure relatively low, so the onboard computer commands the sorting rotors to release O2 and to absorb CO2.
Respirocytes mimic the action of the natural hemoglobin-filled red blood cells. But a respirocyte can deliver 236 times more oxygen per unit volume than a natural red cell. This nanorobot is far more efficient than biology, mainly because its diamondoid construction permits a much higher operating pressure. (The operating pressure of the natural red blood cell is the equivalent of only about 0.51 atm, of which only about 0.13 atm is deliverable to tissues.) So the injection of a 5 cm3 dose of 50% respirocyte aqueous suspension into the bloodstream can exactly replace the entire O2 and CO2 carrying capacity of the patient's entire 5,400 cm3 of blood!
Respirocytes will have pressure sensors to receive acoustic signals from the doctor, who will use an ultrasound-like transmitter device to give the respirocytes commands to modify their behavior while they are still inside the patient's body. For example, the doctor might order all the respirocytes to just stop pumping, and become dormant. Later, the doctor might order them all to turn on again.
What if you added 1 liter of respirocytes into your bloodstream, the maximum that could possibly be safe? You could then hold your breath for nearly 4 hours if sitting quietly at the bottom of a swimming pool. Or if you were sprinting at top speed, you could run for at least 15 minutes before you had to take a breath!
It is clear that very "simple" medical nanodevices
can have extremely useful abilities, even when applied in relatively small
doses. Other more complex devices will have a broader range of capabilities.
Some devices may have mobility the ability
to swim through the blood, or crawl through body tissue or along the walls
of arteries. Others will have different shapes, colors, and surface textures,
depending on the functions they must perform. They will have different types
of robotic manipulators, different sensor arrays, and so forth. Each medical
nanorobot will be designed to do a particular job extremely well, and will
have a unique shape and behavior.
6. Will "old nanorobots" left in the body cause problems when they eventually fail?
Following most simple treatments, nanodoctors of the 21st century will want to remove their therapeutic nanorobots from the patient's body as soon as the nanodevices have finished the job. So there will be little danger of "old nanorobots" breaking down or malfunctioning, or causing something unpleasant to happen to the patient after the original disease or traumatic condition has been treated.
Additionally, nanorobots will be designed with a high level of redundancy to ensure fail-operational and fail-safe performance, further reducing the medical risk.
7. How would the nanorobots be retrieved from the body?
Some nanodevices will be able to exfuse themselves from the body via the usual human excretory channels; others will be designed to allow ready exfusion by medical personnel using apheresis-like processes (commonly called nanapheresis) or active scavenger systems. It is very design dependent. In the case of the respirocytes, the removal procedure is fairly simple:
"Once a therapeutic purpose is completed, it may be desirable to extract artificial devices from circulation. Onboard water ballast control is extremely useful during respirocyte exfusion from the blood. Blood to be cleared may be passed from the patient to a specialized centrifugation apparatus where acoustic transmitters command respirocytes to establish neutral buoyancy. No other solid blood component can maintain exact neutral buoyancy, hence those other components precipitate outward during gentle centrifugation and are drawn off and added back to filtered plasma on the other side of the apparatus. Meanwhile, after a period of centrifugation, the plasma, containing mostly suspended respirocytes but few other solids, is drawn off through a 1-micron filter, removing the respirocytes. Filtered plasma is recombined with centrifuged solid components and returned undamaged to the patient's body. The rate of separation is further enhanced either by commanding respirocytes to empty all tanks, lowering net density to 66% of blood plasma density, or by commanding respirocytes to blow a 5-micron O2 gas bubble to which the device may adhere via surface tension, allowing it to rise at 45 mm/hour under normal gravitational acceleration."
(Quoted from Robert A. Freitas Jr., "Exploratory Design in Medical Nanotechnology: A Mechanical Artificial Red Cell," Artificial Cells, Volume 26, 1998, pp. 411-430. This paper is apparently the first detailed design study of a specific medical nanodevice (of the general type proposed by Drexler in Nanosystems) that has been published. See earlier description in: Robert A. Freitas Jr., "Respirocytes: High Performance Artificial Nanotechnology Red Blood Cells," Nanotechnology Magazine, Volume 2, October 1996, pp. 1, 8-13.)
8. Won't medical nanorobots be attacked by the immune system, as soon as they are placed inside the human body?
Immune system response is primarily a reaction to a "foreign" surface. Nanorobot size is also an important variable, along with device mobility, surface roughness, surface mobility, and other factors. Yet the problem of nanodevice biocompatibility is in principle no more difficult than the biocompatibility of medical implants generally. In some ways it may even be an easier problem, because many medical nanorobots will have only temporary residence in the body. Even today, application of immunosuppressive agents during the treatment period would allow poorly-engineered non-bioinactive nanorobots to perform their repair work without trouble.
Passive diamond exteriors may turn out to be ideal. Several experimental studies hint that the smoother and more flawless the diamond surface, the less leukocyte activity and the less fibrinogen adsorption you will get. So it seems reasonable to hope that when diamond coatings can be laid down with almost flawless atomic precision, making nanorobot exterior surfaces with near-nanometer smoothness, that these surfaces may have very low bioactivity. Due to the extremely high surface energy of the passivated diamond surface and the strong hydrophobicity of the diamond surface, the diamond exterior is almost completely chemically inert and so opsonization should be minimized.
However, even if flawless diamond surfaces alone do not prove fully bioinactive as hoped, active surface management of the nanorobot exterior can be used to ensure complete nanodevice biocompatibility. Allergic and shock reactions are similarly easily avoided.
9. How fast can medical nanorobots replicate inside the human body?
This is a very common error. Medical nanorobots need not EVER replicate. In fact, it is unlikely that the FDA (or its future equivalent) would ever approve for general use a medical nanodevice that was capable of in vivo replication. Except in the most unusual of circumstances, you would never want anything that could replicate itself to be turned loose inside your body. Replicating bacteria are trouble enough!
Replication is a crucial basic capability for molecular manufacturing. But aside from the most aggressive applications, there is simply no good reason to risk manufacturing "fertile" nanorobots inside the human body, when "mule" nanorobots can be manufactured so cheaply, conveniently, and in such vast numbers outside of the human body. Replicators will almost certainly be very tightly regulated by governments everywhere.
10. Will medical nanorobots possess a humanlike artificial intelligence?
This is another common error. Many medical nanorobots will
have very simple computers on board each device. Respirocytes,
for example, have only a ~1,000 operations/sec computer on board each device
far less
computing power than an old Apple II.
Most cellular repair nanorobots will not need more than 106-109 operations/sec of onboard computing capacity to do their work. This is a full 4-7 orders of magnitude below (even the potential for) true human-equivalent computing at 10 teraflops (~1013 operations/sec). Faster computing capacity is simply not required for most medical nanorobots.
11. How would a medical nanorobot be powered?
One of the earliest proposals by Drexler in Engines of Creation was that an in vivo medical nanodevice could metabolize local glucose and oxygen for energy. Another possibility is externally supplied acoustic power, which is probably most appropriate in a clinical setting. There are literally dozens of useful power sources that are potentially available in the human body, as described in Chapter 6 of Nanomedicine.
12. How would you communicate with the machines as they do their work?
There are many different ways to do this. One of the simplest ways to send broadcast-type messages into the body, to be received by in vivo nanorobots, is acoustic messaging. A device similar to an ultrasound probe would encode messages on acoustic carrier waves at frequencies between 1-10 MHz. Thus the supervising physician can easily send new commands or parameters to nanorobots already at work inside the body. Each nanorobot has its own power supply, computer, and sensorium, thus can receive the physician's messages via acoustic sensors, then compute and implement the appropriate response.
The other half of the process is getting messages back out of the body, from the working nanodevices out to the physician. This can also be done acoustically. However, onboard power requirements for micron-scale acoustic wave generators in water dictate a maximum practical transmission range of at most a few hundred microns for each individual nanorobot. Therefore it is convenient to establish an internal communications network that can collect local messages and pass them along to a central location, which the physician can then monitor using sensitive ultrasound detectors to receive the messages. Such a network can probably be deployed inside a patient in less than an hour, may involve up to 100 billion mobile nanorobotic network nodes, and may release at most 60 watts of waste heat (less than the 100-watt human body basal rate) assuming a (worst case) full 100% network duty cycle.
There are many other techniques that may be used as well this one
is just the easiest to describe.
13. If medical nanorobots are infused into the human body, intravenously, how would one track their location?
A navigational network may be installed in the body, with stationkeeping navigational elements providing high positional accuracy to all passing nanorobots that interrogate them, wanting to know their location.
Physical positions can be reported continuously using an in vivo communications network. Since the typical therapeutic dose may involve billions or trillions of nanorobots (e.g. up to a few cm3 of injection), it will usually be impractical to address nanorobots individually, though this is in principle possible for treatments involving only a few million devices, or fewer.
14. What form of detection system would medical nanorobots use to distinguish between differing cell types?
Each cell type has its own unique set of surface antigens.
Other cell surface antigens indicate the health status of the cell, the parent
organ type, the species of the animal, and even the identity of the individual
a kind
of biochemical Social Security Number.
So the short answer to this question is: Use chemotactic sensors (crudely analogous to chemical force microscopy), keyed to the specific known antigens on the target cells you are looking for. Knowledge of these antigens will become extensive, soon after the completion of the Human Genome Project early in the 21st century.
15. How would chemical agents (e.g. an anti-cancer drug) be transported and delivered to a target cell?
Once you've identified a group of cells that needs some chemical substance delivered to it, you can simply release the agent from onboard tanks after the nanorobot arrives on the scene. A 1 cm3 injection of 1-micron nanodevices could probably hold at least 0.5 cm3 of chemical agent. Virtually all of these billions of nanites (in the 1 cm3) will be smart enough to show up at the correct group of cells that are targeted for destruction, so delivery efficiency is virtually 100%. Onboard sensors can test for ambient levels of the chemical agent, to prevent overdose.
However, this question is a good example of an "anachronistic"
application one that
could be done using medical nanorobots, but in fact would probably never be
done that way, because in an era of advanced nanotechnology much more efficient
and much less destructive ways would exist to get the same job done. In the
above example, bulk delivery of cytotoxins to tissue cells is completely unnecessary
if the means exists to reverse the carcinomatous process at the cellular and
genetic level.
16. Is it possible to image in vivo medical nanomachines using an imaging technique such as MRI, or would one have to look directly at tissue?
Yes, nanodevices could probably be observed at work inside the body using MRI, especially if their diamond components were manufactured using mostly 13C atoms rather than the more common natural 12C isotope of carbon, since 13C has a nonzero nuclear magnetic moment. But in the nanomedical era, such an approach may again be somewhat anachronistic. Here's why.
Applying the classical medical model to a typical nanomedical
treatment, the medical nanodevices would first be injected into a human body,
and would then go to work say, in
a specific organ or tissue mass. The physician wants to be able to monitor
their progress, and make certain that the nanodevices have gotten to the correct
target treatment region. So the first instinct of the contemporary physician
who is contemplating a prospective nanomedical treatment will be to insist
on the ability to directly image the nanorobots. In other words, the doctor
wants to be able to scan a section of the body, and actually see the nanodevices
congregated neatly around their target, say, a tumor mass, so that he can
be absolutely certain that the therapy is proceeding as (and where) planned.
However, if the technology exists to fabricate nanorobots to molecular precision, then this same technology will allow communication and navigational mechanisms to be designed and built into each and every nanorobot, and will also allow communications and navigational networks to be deployed inside the body. Therapeutic nanodevices may be programmed to home in on a very precisely-specified set of surface antigens populating the surface of the target tumor mass. As an additional guide, internal reference frame navigation with millimeter (or better) accuracy may be used to direct the nanorobots to the close vicinity of the target treatment volume.
So the correct medical treatment model in the nanomedical era is as follows: Injected and circulating nanorobots would remain absolutely inactive outside of the target volume. Even once inside the target treatment volume, nanorobots would still remain inactive until the precise antigenic signature of the target tissue was chemotactically detected by nanorobot sensors. The nanorobots could further be programmed to remain inactive until they received an acoustic command from the physician telling them that they were free to begin the active treatment, perhaps after the physician receives confirmation through the navigational grid that most of the devices have reached their proper destinations. The physician retains complete control throughout the course of the treatment process; a signal ordering all nanorobots to halt may be sent at any time.
Equally important, nanorobots can communicate their positions,
operational statuses, and the success or failure of the treatment as the treatment
progresses. Bandwidth limitations will require considerable information pooling,
but this should not present a problem. In this treatment model, the physician
receives continuous reports from the active nanorobots. They tell you their
physical coordinates in the body, so you know where they are. They tell you
how many cancer cells they have encountered and inactivated (or whatever is
the appropriate metric to establish progress for the particular treatment).
They will have multiple-redundant systems (like the five consensus computers
onboard the Space Shuttle), establishing a fail-operational or a fail-safe
design upon detecting
a critical component failure, the device places itself in shutdown mode in
preparation for exfusion.
So in this kind of scenario, it may be quite unnecessary to image the nanodevices directly, because the feedback available to the supervising physician from other means will be far more sophisticated, reliable, useful, and complete.
17. To monitor the progress of the nanorobots during a treatment, could you biopsy the tissue and the image the machines using transmission electron microscopy?
Yes, it would be possible to biopsy tissue and then image the embedded nanomachines using transmission electron microscopy. However, the normal presumption will be that your medical nanorobots are working properly. Because of fail-safe design, the nanodevices should only rarely be a part of the problem. On the contrary, they will likely be a major part of the solution.
In the usual biopsy situation, your primary interest is in the condition of the tissue, not the condition of the nanodevices embedded in it. But nanodevices can be used to rapidly examine a given piece of tissue, surveying its biochemistry, biomechanics, and histometric characteristics in great detail. Indeed, in an era of proficient nanomedicine, it should rarely be necessary to remove tissue samples from patients for testing at all. Most testing should be possible in situ, with the added benefits of reduced intrusiveness, increased patient comfort, and greater fidelity of results since the target tissue can be examined in its active state in the actual host environment.
18. What could go wrong during a nanomedical procedure?
The incompetence or negligence of medical personnel is always a potential concern. However, in the nanomedical era, as today, such occurrences should be infrequent and notorious.
A true glitch will come from some direction that nobody anticipated.
Biocompatibility problems are well anticipated, and multiple-redundant onboard
computers should ensure safe operation, correct operation, and reprogrammability
of operational parameters even after the devices have been launched on their
mission especially
to permit deactivation if anything goes wrong. Fail-stop protocols may be
particularly appropriate in high-risk missions where large numbers of replacement
nanorobots are readily available.
Therefore, the most serious problems may devolve from the
inherent complexity of a trillion machines independently trying to cooperatively
work on a very complex repair problem in a short period of time. One class
of malfunction might involve some unexpected emergent machine-machine interaction
the kind
of subtle interaction that is unlikely to have been exhaustively tested in
full-up systems, in advance.
As a simple example, consider two nanorobot species that are jointly repairing a given block of tissue. If the nanorobot programming allows species A to interpret the repair work of species B as a new tissue flaw that lies within species A's original repair mission parameters, and vice versa, then it would be possible for the two species to become locked in an endless recursive cycle, as each species attempted repeatedly to undo the other's work.
But even in such cases, control over the devices is not lost. The supervising physician, upon observing the fault, would simply shut down one or the other species to allow the work to proceed, or would shut down both species and reprogram them both (while they are still inside the body) to avoid the unwanted emergent behavior. The doctor must always be able to "pull the plug" on the nanomachines. This is one of the most important design constraints, one that will probably become a strict and universal regulatory requirement for all medical nanodevices.
19. What would be the biggest benefit to be gained for human society from nanomedicine?
Nanomedicine will eliminate virtually all common diseases
of the 20th century, virtually all medical pain and suffering, and allow the
extension of human capabilities most especially
our mental abilities.
Consider that a nanostructured data storage device measuring ~8,000 micron3, a cubic volume about the size of a single human liver cell and smaller than a typical neuron, could store an amount of information equivalent to the entire Library of Congress. If implanted somewhere in the human brain, together with the appropriate interface mechanisms, such a device could allow extremely rapid access to this information.
A single nanocomputer CPU, also having the volume of just one tiny human cell, could compute at the rate of 10 teraflops (1013 floating-point operations per second), approximately equalling (by many estimates) the computational output of the entire human brain. Such a nanocomputer might produce only about 0.001 watt of waste heat, as compared to the ~25 watts of waste heat for the biological brain in which the nanocomputer might be embedded.
But perhaps the most important long-term benefit to human society as a whole could be the dawning of a new era of peace. We could hope that people who are independently well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, smart, well-educated, healthy and happy will have little motivation to make war. Human beings who have a reasonable prospect of living many "normal" lifetimes will learn patience from experience, and will be extremely unlikely to risk those "many lifetimes" for any but the most compelling of reasons.
1) What is nanotechnology?
The prefix "nano-" is used in the SI system of scientific
units to denote "one billionth" (1nm = 10^-9 m), but has come to
mean "anything much smaller than our current standard capabilities."
Hence aerospace engineers speak of "nanosatellites" that mass a
few kilograms -- even though that's merely one one-thousandth ("milli-")
of current ton-scale satellites.
Norio Taniguchi of Tokyo science University first defined the term "nanotechnology"
in 1974 (N. Taniguchi, "On the Basic Concept of 'NanoTechnology',"
Proc. Intl. Conf. Prod. Eng. Tokyo, Part II, Japan Society of Precision Engineering,
1974).
Its meaning was soon diluted, however, so Eric
Drexler introduced "Molecular Nanotechnology" through his book "Unbounding
the Future" in 1991 to reinforce their essential molecular precision,
and "Molecular Manufacturing" to portray their use in tiny assembly
lines (not so different from those in Detroit, or on the surface of an intracellular
membrane). To build macroscopic products like steak tartar, artificial hearts
or automobiles, a great many manufacturing lines would have to pool their
products, creating progressively larger subassemblies; this he called "convergent
assembly." To go from a single replication-capable ur-nanomachine to
the billions needed to staff those assembly lines, Ralph Merkle added the
term "Exponential Manufacturing" in [[date?]]. In the scientific
literature, you'll find reference to Nanoparticles, Nanolithography, Nanites, and Nanprobes.
2) What is the difference between Drexlerian Nano and Non-Drexlerian?
Before Drexler, there was a talk by the physicist Richard
Feynman ("There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom")
where he envisioned the possibility of building things with atomic precision.
He didn't flesh out the implications of self-replicating assemblers, as has
since been done by Drexler and others. Feynman did imagine a path
for getting to a working nanotechnology. He imagined building a set of machine
tools (lathes, mills, drills, etc.) which could be used to build a second
set of machine tools, one-tenth the size of the first set. You'd also need
to build controls that would allow you to operate the second set of machine
tools, either manually or with computer automation. Then you'd use the second
set to build a third set, one-hundredth the size of the first set, along with
any necessary controls. You continue this until you get tools that can directly
push atoms around, and make and break chemical bonds.
(However,) some things scale linearly, some quadratically, and some as the
cube or even the fourth power. So as you shrink a design, things that could
be neglected at one scale grow to dominate, and you have to use new principles.
However, in many industries, this is a well understood engineering problem,
and is usually dealt with by building a small prototype plant, getting the
bugs out, building one several times the size, dealing with the new problems,
then scaling up again. Common examples include oil tankers, power plants both
nuclear and fossil fueled, etc. {WW}
and {RIE}
3) What is the relationship of pico or femto engineering to nanotechnology?
These are scales 1000 (picotechnology ~= 10^-12 m)to 1 million
(femtotechnology = 10^-15 m) times smaller than atomic sizes. These would
probably deal with nuclear and quark physics, respectively. Because of the
disparities of the energies involved, there is no direct relationship.
Neither violate the laws of physics. We don't yet know if either are possible
or if possible whether they are technically useful. Even so, rest assured
beyond our nanotech future there lie additional realms of possibility! - {JoSH}
and {WMK}}
4) When is nanotechnology going to happen?
Obviously only guesses can be made. It also depends on what one considers the defining moment for nanotechnology. At the current time estimates quoted in the usenet group range from 5 to 150 years for the first working devices of nanotech dimensions. Dates for actual assemblers range from 50 to 200 years. {AJ}
5) What is the current state of nanotechnology?
The field of nanotechnology is so wide and currently undergoing a period of expansion that any answer to this question is sure to be outstripped quickly. The Nanotechnology Opportunity Report as of November 2001 is the best and most up to date overview and development map of the state of fairly recent activities. For an older perspectives there is the WTEC reports from early 2001. We are keeping a record of the current development state of the Universal Assembler.
6) What molecular nanotechnology products exist today?
None. At least, no molecular "Drexlerian" nanotechnology products.
7) How can I evaluate nanotech claims for plausibility?
What are sure signs that the speaker doesn't know Fact One about nanotechnology,
and should be handled cautiously?
To tell when someone does not understand anything you have to know a fair bit about that subject yourself. Nanotechnology is no different. The reading materials listed on the newbies page will give you enough understanding to identify those who don't know anything, although not enough to make you an expert either.
i. "There are a million nanometers in a meter" - There are a billion, (a nm is -10^9 m).
ii. "it doing things smaller than atoms" - its doing things WITH atoms (via molecules).
iii. "nanotechnology started when Democritus proposed the concept of the atom" - atoms are not functional and therefore not a technology.
iv. "You could just scan an object, record the locations of the atoms, then rebuild it with an assembler" - at present there is no known way to identify the atomic coordinates of every atom in a solid object that does not possess perfect long range order, such as a perfect crystal. BUT this one is also quite tricky as some more advanced theories dealing with mature nanotechnology and MNT use this as one of the assumed future developments. Mostly though the experts link it with some proposed system whereby the object being scanned is pulled apart in the scan (or something like that).
v. "assemblers can place atoms in just the right places to build any structure imaginable" - not without violating the quantum physics that governs what bonding arrangements can take place. Atoms are either inert (He, Ar) or inherently sticky, and hence the promising pathway is through chemical synthesis - assemblers will only be able to build structures which obey the laws of chemistry and quantum physics. You may hear an expert use a similar phrase but they will not use the words "anything imaginable". They will say "anything physically possible" or similar wording placing limits on their sentence.
8) Who are the respected authorities in nanotech?
Some recognized authorities (not a comprehensive list by any means):
·
Drexler,
K. Eric
Author of the seminal works "Engines of Creation", and "Nanosystems".
First person to obtain a Ph.D. in nanotechnology from MIT 1991. Founder of
the Foresight Institute, considered the father of modern
nanotechnology.
·
Merkle, Ralph.
Author of many technical papers on nanotechnology. Founder of the Nanotechnology
group at Xerox PARC. Currently working for Zyvex Inc.
·
Freitas, Robert A. Jr.
Author of the reference set "Nanomedicine", and considered the world's
expert on the applications of nanotechnology to medicine.
·
Smalley, Richard
1996 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry for his work with fullerene tubes. Although not directly related
to MNT per se, these fullerene tubes are considered very important because
they most likely will form the structural components of most molecular nanotechnological
devices.
· Reed, Mark.
9) Who will control nanotechnology? Can it be controlled? Should it be?
There is no answer for any of these question at the current time
Hypothesis:
Limitations and Capabilities of nanotechnology
1) Is there anything nanotechnology can't do? What are its limits?
It must work within the limits of physical laws. Available matter, available energy, heat generation, relativity, and quantum mechanical uncertainty all set limits on what can be done.
2) Is nanotechnology the last technology?
The subtitle to K. Eric Drexler's book "Engines of Creation" is "Challenges and Choices of the Last Technological Revolution". The implicit assumption being no other technologies will follow with equivalent impact. Is that a reasonable assumption? Perhaps, perhaps not. At a smaller scale and larger energy range are nuclear technologies. Or additional dimensions. The exact physical laws for this scale have yet to be worked out in full detail. At very large scales (planetary and solar system size and up) there has only been speculation on possible technologies. The same is true for attainment of high relativistic speeds. Breakthroughs in these realms might lead to technologies as revolutionary as nanotechnology.
3) Doesn't Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle forbid the possibility of nanotechnology?
Technical:
Assume that we want to place a carbon atom on a specific previously-positioned
atom. We need to position it to within roughly a bond length in order to have
it bond to the right atom. A typical bond length is around an Angstrom, 0.1
nm or 10^-10 meters.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says:
sigmaX * sigmaP >~ hbar/2 (eq. 4.12, Nanosystems)
Here, sigmaX = 10-10 meters, hbar/2 = 5.3 * 10-35
Joule*seconds (or kg*m2/s) so deltaP >~ 5.3 * 10-25
kg*m/s.
Our carbon (12) atom has a mass of 2 * 10-26 kilograms, so the
uncertainty in its velocity is 5.3 * 10-25 / 2 * 10-26
= 26.5 m/s.
To put it another way, the zero-point energy it must have in order to be confined
in this space is roughly sigmaE = ½*m*v2 = ½*2*10-26
kg * (26.5 m/s)2 = 7 * 10-24 J, which is 500 times less
than thermal energy, 4 * 10-21 J, at room temperature. So thermal
oscillations generate a greater positional uncertainty than quantum uncertainty
does. {JS}
Less Technical: The uncertainty principle states that particles can't
be pinned down to an exact location for any length of time. It limits what
molecular machines can do, just as it limits what anything else can do. Nonetheless,
calculations show that the uncertainty principle places few important limits
on how well atoms can be held in place, at least for the purposes of nanotechnology.
The uncertainty principle makes electron positions quite fuzzy, and in fact
this fuzziness determines the very size and structure of atoms. An atom as
a whole, however, has a comparatively definite position set by its comparatively
massive nucleus. If atoms didn't stay put fairly well, molecules would not
exist. One needn't study quantum mechanics to trust these conclusions, because
molecular machines in the cell demonstrate that molecular machines work well.
{KED}
4) Won't thermal fluctuations damage nanomachines?
As mentioned in the answer above, room temperature thermal energy will jiggle atoms around on average by about 4 * 10-21 Joules. But atomic bond energies are on the order of 1 electron volt (eV). If we translate all the mentioned energy units to electron volts, so smaller exponents come into play, we get this set of energy ranges: * ~ 0.00004 eV QM sigmaE for carbon confined to 1 Angstrom. * ~ 0.025 eV average thermal energy at room temperature (~293 K). * ~ 1 eV order of magnitude for typical molecular bond strengths. So the average fluctuations would not break a typical molecular bond. However, because some fluctuations are well above the average, some damage will occur. Further details on the rate at which this damage occurs may be found in K. Eric Drexler's text "Nanosystems". Generally the rate would be low enough to be tolerable for many systems and self-repair mechanisms would be needed for systems where damage is less tolerable.
5) Can nanotechnology be used to do nuclear transmutation?
Not directly. Chemical reactions are on the order of a few electron volts. Nuclear reactions are on the order of a few hundred thousand to millions of electron volts.
6) What alternatives are there to carbon or diamonoid materials?
Silicon oxides have been proposed. They have the advantage that the Earth and its moon contain large quantities of silicon. See http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT05/Papers/Gillett1/.
7) How fast would a carbon nanotube computer be?
At present no analysis for nanotube based optoelectronic,
moltronic, spintronic or molecular quantum computers has been brought to our
attention.
Drexler's original work did cover rod-logic computing systems in his book
Nanosystems.
Chapter 12 covers the technical aspects of such devices and comes to the conclusion;
"Nanomechanical computing systems can be implemented using logic systems
based on sliding rods having switching times of ~0.1ns, with energy dissipation
&082; kT300 per gate. Register cells can be constructed that
approach the theoretical minimum energy dissipation of ln(2)kT. Logic rods
and registers can be joined to build register-to-register combinatorial logic
systems that achieve four register-to-register transfers in ~1.2ns; this performance
suggests that nanomechanical RISC machines can achieve clock speeds of ~1GHz,
executing instructions at ~1000 MIPS [in bus speed to compare with an Intel
Pentium this would be a ~4GHz CPU]. Fast carry chains, RAM, Tapes and I/O
systems all appear feasible.
A CPU-scale system containing 10e6 transistor-like interlocks can fit within
a 400nm cube. Compatible systems for clocking, power supply, and cooling have
been described and analyzed. The power consumption for a 1GHz, CPU-scale system
is estimated to be ~60 nW, performing >10e16 instructions per second per
watt."
9) How can MNT manufacture food? Will it taste good? Will it be good for you?
Although not strictly MNT, one of our members has proposed a workable nanotech based food synthesizer. Details on its workings, and the quality of its output are available.
11) Can nanotechnology be used to extract gold from sea water?
There are about 10 micrograms of gold per ton of sea water. At current prices (rough estimate) 10,000 tons of water contains a dollar's worth of gold. At the prices I pay, a dollar's worth of electricity is not enough to pump that much water more than a couple of inches (with pumps a lot more efficient than the one I've got now). The magnesium in a given volume of sea water is worth a lot more than the gold in the same volume. So is the salt. In the future, it may also become worthwhile to recover the deuterium. {Posted by JoSH in November of 1992}
Impact: Side-effects nanotechnology.
1) What dangers does nanotechnology pose?
SUB: What is the "gray goo" doom scenario?
Nanotech poses several dangers from uncontrolled expansion
to social upheaval.
Ecophagy ("gray goo") is the scenario
in which self-replicating nanomachines capable of digesting the organic feedstock
of a planet undergo unrestricted exponential growth.
Future shock is the term used to apply to the psychological response of individuals
and social groups to a great advance in technology. It has a varied nature
and wide range of possible effects. As such it still comes under discussion
regularly in the sci.nanotech group and is still showing surprises. {AJ}
2) What safeguards can prevent nanotechnology horrors?
The problem of ecophagy, commonly termed "gray goo",
is one that has been known from the early days of nanotechnology. It has been
studied in detail and effective methods
of combating it have been produced.
Future shock is altogether a much harder problem. The best ways to prevent
this appear at present to be through education, allowing the general public
to approach the change through a gradually built confidence in the technology.
The possibilities made available to us through this new technology are "mind-numbing"
to put it simply, reducing the shock is a prime candidate for sociological
study at present. However it is a tricky subject and no perfect solutions
may be possible, the change is vast and the future possibilities are even
more so. {AJ}
3) How will nanotechnology affect society?
The interdependency we have in today's society comes from the mega centralization of manufacturing and capital. However, it seems clear that nanotech will make a much more decentralized manufacturing possible, perhaps even decentralized o your basement. If that is the case we should see a sharp change. In prehistory we were dependent on ourselves and our family, then we move to tribal organization, then to micro states, then to major states, then to today, where we are dependent of a large multinational industrial economy for our way of life. However, with the introduction of nanotech we can see a sharp reversal of that, all the way back to the family, in a few short years, because we won't need all these mega-corps or governments to provide our lifestyle. Talk about future shock!
Opportunities: How can I get involved?
1) I'm not a scientist. What can I do to help bring about the nano-revolution?
There is no absolute answer to this question at the current time. The most work is presently research so the current best way to help is to become a scientist, student or investor.
2) Where can I invest money in nanotechnology?
For small groundwork contributions checkout Foresight
Org or Institute for Molecular Manufacturing.
Some consultant and investor services have started appearing to direct potential
investors towards hopeful developments and research groups in need of funding.
These include Ardesta Microsystems, Investment broker for "small
tech" as they bill themselves for microtech and smaller areas, nAbacus
Nanotechnological Consultants, An Asian-Pacific based consultancy
on nanotechnology).
While Zyvex
was set up to pursue Drexlerian nanotechnology, it is a private company
and one must be a qualified investor (as defined by the US SEC) with significant
assets before one can invest in it.
Some public companies (such as Nanophase Technologies Corporation [Nasdaq:
NANX] and Nanometrics Incorporated [Nasdaq: NANO]) have "nano" in
their name, but their products would generally not be considered directly
related to Drexlerian nanotechnology.
The journals posted in the Publications section often carry news of funding
and investment threads pop up occasionally in most forums.
Which route you take is up to you, as with any investment its a risky business
and those in the know around here are keeping the cash-cows to themselves.
3) What college level coursework or major would best prepare me for working in nanotechnology?
Nanotechnology overlaps with a wide range of the existing sciences so which ever field of Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science or Biology (Biomedical) you specialize in you will be able to find some degree of involvement. Degrees spread over several of these however have a greater bearing on Nanotechnology. Degrees that seem at present to have the most direct and constructive involvement with Nanotechnology are:
· 1) Optical and Quantum Physics
· 2) Molecular Biology
· 3) Biomedical Engineering - Through genetics and MicroBio
· 4) Electrical Engineering - Through MEMS systems
· 5) Software Engineering - Through AI, Communication and Information Systems
Degrees in Nanotechnology are starting to appear and those
known are listed in below. And a Briefing
on Nanotechnology and Education can be found at Foresight for some
very useful advice.
Whatever program you choose make sure you get good math preparation (through
calculus and differential equations), computer modeling (physics systems,
molecular biology, etc.). Try to get some machine shop experience. As an experimental
scientist (even though I do a lot of mathematical modeling) I have to design
and build my own instrumentation. Last I suggest courses in electronic instrumentation.
You need the ability to design electronic instruments and know how to interface
electronic circuits to computers. If you look on the web you will only see
a handful of nanotech companies. The majority of the research is done at universities.
To play the game you will have to do graduate work (MSc., Ph.D preferred)
You are talking about 12 years of school : BSc (4 yrs), MS (3 yrs) and Ph.D.
(4 yrs). {FRU}
4) What universities currently offer degrees in Nanotechnology?
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BSc in Nanotechnology |
Adelaide, Australia |
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MSc in Microsystems and Nanotechnology |
Cranfield, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom |
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Post Graduate Studies in Nanotechnology |
Washington, USA |
1) What fields can MNT be applied to, but are *not* fruitful topics of discussion on sci.nanotech?
Like "computers," "nanotech" will probably
be applied to every field of human endeavor, making obsolete certain techniques
and automating others, augmenting existing capabilities and creating entirely
new ones. The range of applications is so broad that it's not particularly
useful (in y2000) to speak of specifics, particularly not in sci.nanotech, a
newsgroup devoted to the technology itself. It would be like asking "how
can computers affect art?" in comp.graphics.algorithms, comp.os.research
or sci.engr.semiconductors.
{PET}.
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